Arguing with Idiots – Jon Stewart

by T. Jefferson

GLENN: That’s right, coming soon to a bookstore near you, very near you. Arguing With Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government. It’s a way to use common sense, reason, logic and humor to win arguments against all of the idiots in your life. It’s specifically designed for your idiot friends, your idiot coworkers, even those few times when the idiot is you. You know the conversations I’m talking about like when your friend comes up to you and says…

PAT: Hey, Glenn, you know what? You always say that we have the best healthcare system in the world.

GLENN: Yes.

PAT: Yet, this time you made a YouTube video a while ago saying that you had a nightmare experience with your butt surgery? Remember? That butt is huge, by the way. You might want to lay off the jelly doughnuts, fatty Fat Fatso, the best healthcare system in the world, huh? Yeah.

GLENN: So to a 45 year old man with a wife, four kids, who have dealt with the medical system hundreds of times in their lives, your main argument to debunk the quality of our entire healthcare system is to bring up my one bad experience?

PAT: Well, yeah. But I mean, it wasn’t just that one thing. You said our healthcare system is a nightmare. Aha! I have you. I have you.

GLENN: Sure. Sure, you do, and I stand by that. The idea of being drugged and cut open to avoid dying of, you know, something else, then waking only to deal with paperwork and recovery is a nightmare, but like our legal system, or our political system, it’s the worst system in the world… except for all of the others. This reform is basically saying congress is broken; let’s implement a ruthless dictator. No, no, I don’t uh uh, I don’t think we’re going to go with that. Our healthcare system, which is far from perfect, is much more effective and more salvageable than congress ever is.

PAT: Yeah, yeah, but Jon Stewart said you made a YouTube video and then he looked into the camera with a puzzled sort of look, you know, on his face. That’s when I know he’s telling the truth, and it’s time for me to laugh. And I saw him do that, and I laughed.

GLENN: I’m sure you did.

PAT: A lot.

GLENN: But my argument for our healthcare system revolves around facts. For instance, try this fact. Look into my eyes.

PAT: Okay.

GLENN: This terrible healthcare system has produced half of all new major medicines introduced in the last 20 years.

PAT: Can I look away now? It’s really creepy.

GLENN: No, keep looking at me.

PAT: Really creepy.

GLENN: The fact that over the past three decades an American has won the Nobel Prize for medicine 80% of the time. We have 5% of the world’s population. See, that’s part of my argument. His argument is a YouTube video of a highly drugged and unattractive talk show host.

PAT: Yeah, but Jon Stewart said it, while looking puzzled into the camera.

GLENN: Did you ever stop to think that maybe Jon Stewart just looks into the camera and doesn’t bother trying to make sense of his arguments? I mean, you know, not because he’s a comedian but because he’s 100% sure his audience wouldn’t put a second thought into what he’s saying?

PAT: You know, I always meant to think about it but then… reruns of Scrubs comes on, which reminds me, how can we expect to have adequate healthcare when our doctors are always pulling pranks on each other and flashing back into hilarious situations? Answer that one, you big fatty Fat Fatso! Fat liar, lying fat liar. Fatty fatso.

GLENN: I will tell you I think we have the best book we’ve ever done. It has taken us over a year to write.

STU: It’s good.

GLENN: It is good, isn’t it?

STU: It’s great.

GLENN: For instance, the second chapter is the Second Amendment. It has chapters on the Constitution. It has everything I will tell you this, that when I went over a year ago to Simon and Schuster, this is before we got our own, you know, publishing deal where we make the decisions, I went to them and I said, I want to call it commies. And I thought I wanted to call it I was remembering it the other day. I think it was March to Socialism and I thought, no, no, it was commies. Do you remember, Stu?

STU: Yes.

GLENN: And everyone said nobody’s going to and I said

PAT: I’m surprised.

GLENN: I know. And I said, trust me, at the time this comes out in September 2009, this is maybe July of 2008, everyone is going to be talking about socialism and communism and what are we and what is supposed to happen. "No, no, no, no, no." So we renamed it Arguing what is it?

STU: Arguing With Idiots.

GLENN: Arguing With Idiots. Commies.

PAT: I like commies. That’s got a ring to it.

STU: It does.

PAT: It would have sold a few copies.

STU: Arguing with idiots does describe what the book does.

GLENN: It does. Here’s what it is. I started to tell you, for instance, the second chapter is the Second Amendment and it is the best argumentative ever encountered, isn’t it?

PAT: I’ve already

GLENN: Every single one of us. See, what we did with this book is we went to experts. For instance, the Second Amendment. We said we went to William Heller, the guy from the, you know, the

PAT: Heller case.

GLENN: The Heller case. The guy who’s made who overturned the D.C. gun ban and we said, okay, you argued in front of the Supreme Court. What are we missing? And he came and gave us no, it’s not Heller.

STU: That was his attorney.

GLENN: Yeah, what was his name?

STU: Off the top of my head.

GLENN: I can’t remember his name. I apologize. Apologize to the guy who really helped us out.

STU: Who saved the Second Amendment. Sorry about that.

GLENN: Whatever, whatever, oh, grab your gun, freak. But we went to these experts and we said, okay, what are we missing? Help us make the case. And I’m telling you there are things in this book that you won’t read any place else and they are the best arguments. And we’re trying to come up with a system now. Do you know, do we have the system of e mail?

STU: I don’t know yet.

GLENN: We’re trying to have we’re trying to make this interactive so when you’ve read the book and then you’re standing there and you’re at a town hall meeting and they’re like, yeah, well, healthcare… you just dial some digits and the arguments will come right to you because you’ll read it if you don’t take it with you all the time, you’ll read it and you’ll be like, oh, my gosh, I’ve got to remember that. So we’re trying to give you a way where you can just dial digits and they will be e mailed to you instantly to give you some of the arguments. But it’s coming out I don’t even know when it’s coming out. Do you?

STU: September 22nd, I believe.

PAT: And that chapter, that chapter in particular has virtually any argument on the Second Amendment you’ve ever heard and some you probably haven’t. And it’s got it has great explanations for all of them. It’s just really great.

GLENN: There’s some of the chapters are breathtaking.

STU: You know, you’re right. But there’s not enough of, "Hey, you big fat, fat fatty" in there. And I think we should have worked that in more.

GLENN: I think there is.

STU: You are right.

GLENN: This one is patterned after "An Inconvenient Book," and I want to tell you why. I truly believe that the youth are almost gone. They didn’t grow up. You know, this next generation coming online never experienced the Soviet Union. They don’t know. And they are being taught in school that communism is neat. There’s nothing wrong with it. Socialism’s fantastic. Capitalism, well, there’s the problem. And so they don’t know. When you read and I’ve been recommending this for years. When you read the 5,000 Year Leap, you will learn things that you didn’t know, and it’s the best weapon in your arsenal, the 5,000 Year Leap. This book was set out specifically to cover not only you, I mean, I swear to you you will learn things in this book you had no idea. We have spent over a year on this book and I believe it is our best book we’ve ever done by far. But I specifically again designed it for the youth for college educated. You can go into your high school student, your college. It’s riddled with ADD. It is easy to read. It is in full, what, four, five color print and it not only has ADD so they can digest it and they can read it but also it has 25 pages of fine print footnotes because I wanted you to know exactly, I wanted you I learned from "An Inconvenient Book," "Well, yeah, but where do you get all this information"? We didn’t have the time on that one to put all the footnotes in. This one we did. So your kids can use it as a school book where they want to make a debate, they want use an argument, they don’t have to quote me. Everything is footnoted in this thing so you can go to the original source and find out exactly, that way your kid doesn’t have to say, "I learned that from Glenn Beck" and immediately be discredited. "Oh, I learned that on Page A 25 of the New York Times, August 17th, 2005." It’s Arguing With Idiots. It will be in bookstores everywhere in September. It’s available for presale now I think on Amazon.com.